Idiots at the range

[beach elvis]

Last year, I joined a beautiful club range near my house. EXTREMELY well-manicured, with lanes out to 200 yds. It's seld policing but the benches are usually clean (I bring a pushbroom with me, just in case.) It's a beautiful range and inexpensive. I'm very grateful. Obviously, the people in charge are not messin' around. Love it.

HOWEVER, the only sanitary facilities are a porta-john. Not an issue at all except for the first time I ever visited it, I noticed about a 4-inch group of 7 .44-or-so caliber bullet holes in the door.

What's up with people???????????????????????

 

[John Ross]

Just before I purchased my S&W 460 XVR, I rented one at a gun range to see if I would like the gun and be able to handle the recoil. The man at the counter warned me about keeping my left hand away from the cylinder area. He said that someone (probably a first time revolver user) had rented a 460 previously and had used his left hand to grasp around the cylinder area to try to steady his aim.

That is exactly what happened to the fellow in the below picture. Scoped, heavy barrel .460 that got heavy after two cylinders so he supported it under the trigger guard with his left palm, left thumb tip right by the b/c gap.

 

[GatorFarmer]

Most shooting ranges that I've been to have bullet holes in the ceiling, floors, the tables, partitions...

Ever since the time I was down range setting up a target and my friends started shooting again - I crouched down behind the dirt mound and had a smoke listening to the rounds impact... well ever since then I generally don't go shooting without wearing body armor. At one range I used to go to, circa the turn of the century, I even took to wearing a helmet when I'd shoot. It kept the barrages of hot steel cased AK casings from nearby lanes at bay.

 

[Jc85]

oh wow.. Yuck!

 

[venomballistics]

in my CCW class the instructor told us of a little old lady who did this with a 9MM.
she was quite bull headed about getting a thumb behind the slide and about the time the instructor figured he had her trained not to she fired a few shots properly then reverted.
another one in the class was a doctor .. the gun laid her open the doc stitched her up in the parking lot and she came back in to qualify. No ... she didnt do it again.

since teaching my wife to shoot, I understand the roots of this problem ... where we fire and recover from muzzle flip, this part of the recoil cycle drives em nuts and they try to find ways of holding the muzzle down, usually with the thumb.
Its a rather comfortable place to park the thumb too .. that is until the slide comes back, and it would probably offer some extra control too .. if the slide movement was optional.
in fact there is a grip for the 1911 called the gas peddle which capitalizes on this by offering a thumb rest pad alongside the slide

 

[novalty]

You mess with the Eagle you get the claws.

 

[CelticSire]

That's what my old Platoon Sergeant would call a self-correcting problem.

 

[arjay]

I've always gone to the mountains or way out on the prairie with a friend,a son or alone.The few times I've been to a range it seems there is at least one knothead who shouldn't be near a gun.I've even been swept by the owner of a local gun store.That kind of stuff just makes my blood boil.

 

[H Richard]

I have had a couple opportunities to stop people from doing it, and one of the reasons I seldom teach a class any more. The last one was a very unexpected one, a guy I have shot trap, skeet & sporting clays with for several years. He decides to try some pistol shooting and comes to our little indoor .22RF range to try some bullseye. Has his nice new S&W Mod 41, and put his thumb just up the back side of the frame. I very quietly reached up and pushed his thumb off the back and told him to think about how the gun operates. He frowned, then said "Oh Sh##", that would really hurt. That was a couple years ago, and he hasn't done it since.

 

[Dr.-d]

That's what I call "The Classic". Most likely it was someone who goes out and buys the biggest gun they could find. Probably based on what they saw in the movies. Doesn't get any training or instruction because what their buddies or Hollywood says is gospel and there you go, that's what happens.

 

[ImprovedModel56Fan]

Very unfortunate. I suppose that it comes from (a) not having good formal education in shooting or a strong family tradition resulting in good informal education and (b) not being both smart and quick to apply the smarts to practical situations. Since I'm not always stellar on the last half of (b), I can sympathize with the auto-victim. I was fortunate to be able to educate myself in firearms handling through Gil Hebard's excellent catalog/instruction manual published in the sixties. I had an awful lot of pages imprinted on my brain before I ever picked up a gun for the first time. Probably I was just lucky.

Just a couple of months ago, an older gentleman and his wife were out at the club, and were directed to the portion of the range at which I was shooting (probably because the RO thought I would keep an eye on them). Good thing he sent them there, because, sure enough, the man commenced to assume a cup-and-saucer hold on a small Ruger revolver that included exposing his support hand to flame and destruction. Fortunately, I was able to correct him immediately. I have also gone so far as to advise some folks occasionally that putting the support-hand thumb over the strong-hand wrist is probably a no-no, as well, even with a revolver, simply because it sets up a habit that may have less desirable results with a bottom-feeder. They're still free to overrule if they don't have any such handguns.

I'm not surprised that people make mistakes, but, after first aid, my first inclination is to figure out why they did self-destructive things. It's not like they actually wanted to.

 

[novalty]

When I got my 1911, my father wanted to give it a try as he hadn't shot a semi-auto before. Had to immediately correct him when he lifted the gun up to fire and his grip placement had his non-dominant thumb in slide-bite territory. Here is his first clip from a semi-auto.
Figured we needed a little easier photo on the eyes than that thumb

**No thumbs were bitten in the making of this picture.

 

[JJEH]

...I saw this guys thumb fold back so far his finger nail was pressed up against his arm right above the wrist...

Glad nobody else got hurt.

 

[ghitch75]

this is why i bought 20 acre's ......

 

[vector16]

I think they closed the range for clean up purposes. There was quite a bit of blood where the thumb seperated at the knuckle. I did not mention that in the original post, My wife was talking to me about what a crappy dishwasher I was at the time of the posting.

 

[ghitch75]

My wife was talking to me about what a crappy dishwasher I was at the time of the posting.

i thought i was the only one that got that speech!!!!....LOL...

 

[cjw3]

There is a public range at the facility where I retired from. I was present for the following:

Ceiling and gable shot with .308 (I was 15 feet away)

.22 rifle fired into one of the posts supporting the range shed...10 times. The lad got a ticket for that.

1911 blown up...yes, they will do that as well.

People walking out to check targets while others are still shooting.

Guy bending over the muzzles of racked rifles to open the actions.

Tracers setting fire to the rear of the backstop.

Illegal short barrel rifles.

Too many people swept with muzzles to begin to count

Thumb/slide interaction with various things, as you have described. I don't think anyone ever does that twice.

Weatherby eyebrows.

I've picked up some odd looking brass there at times: 9mm fired in .40, .40 in .45, .308 in .30-06, .303 Savage in .303 British, etc......pure carelessness.

Since I left, someone had a hot load in a .45 Blackhawk blow the cylinder. A piece struck a bystander in the upper arm severing the brachial artery. Without quick action of an off-duty LEO it is likely he would have bled to death. The range house also had a bullet fired through it when the range was closed. The restroom has been shot with a shotgun a few times.

The above is why I am a member of a couple of private clubs. In my experience, members of such are typically more knowledgeable and exercise more care with firearms. I also use Forest Service land once in a while and occasionally shoot at a couple of well managed indoor ranges. Regardless, I still watch other people like a hawk and am not shy about speaking up, sometimes LOUDLY, when I see something unsafe. That's has earned me some dirty looks now and then, but maybe it registered with them (at least for a while).

 

[amazingflapjack]

I visit a public range in the Ocala National Forest-here in north central Florida, from time to time. There is no oversight by the forest service that is resonisible for the range. The area of the forest is known as a kind of "wild west" area anyway, and there is a lot of hunting that goes on as well. The quality of th experience is based soley on the people there, and that is a very fluid situation, with the possibility of people leaving or ariving all of the time. You can be having a nice shoot with folks that no how to act, when a big load of drunks rolls up and has the equivelent of a "Mad Minute." The observance of generally accepted safety rules is, of course, just as fluid as all other aspects of the experience. To many, a cold range is one in which you take the opurtunity to "load up" and perform firearm adjustments and maintainence. The "firing line" is where people go to fire their guns, but it is OK to sit behind them on the benches and load and chamber a round in your gun, so that you can be ready to go to the afforementioned "firing line" when the last poor sucker is medivaced out. Week ends are a no no, unless you are bringing your ROTC class out so that they can experience a little taste of "the fog of war" ahead of time. Early in the day-earlier in the week, are the best times, because other discerning shooters have figured that out, and you have better than a suckers chance of getting with a group that'll keep'm pointed down range. The boy scouts come in one day a week and basically rebuild the thing. They use target holders made out of 2X4's and particle boards. During deer season, if you go there late in the weekend, the whole place is just shot to doll rags as they say. There is nothing but a pile of splinters. You all should count your blessings! Flapjack.

 

[vector16]

I was at an outdoor range befor xmas. I had taken my Dad shooting because I need a clay thrower. Anyway I was firing Wolff ammo out of my 40ve and a round got stuck in the chamber, I did not know if it had been spent or if it was live. It was lodged GOOD. the slide was to far forward to pull back the slide and to far rearward to take the gun apart to clear. I asked the range master to take a look and see if he could do something, those of you that read this in my previous post know how this ends. He came over and looked at it, he asked me if it was a live round and i said, "I don't know". He then took a 12" steel rod in his right hand and picked up the muzzle of my gun, facing the buisness end and looking down the barrel, stuck the rod down the barrel and started jammin the rod into the stck round. May i remind you this may be a live round resting on the firing pin. He did this for about 10 seconds while my father, people sitting on either side of me and myself watched in total amazement with our jaws on the floor. I took the gun out of his hands and the steel rod. Told him that he had no buisness doing that, no buisness working on the range, he should have what ever license or certification that said he was a range master, revolked, and a few other choice words not yet published in the Websters Dictionary. I had an eyeglass repair kit in my truck with a tiny screw dirver. I stuck the rod down the barrel, measuered the depth and found it was a spent cartridge, inserted the tiny screwdriver into the indicater hole (I love this about S&W pistols), pushed the cartridge forward enough to rack the slide. Took the gun apart and puulled the casing out of the barrel with some plyers, the casing had exploded in the chamber and slightly welded to it. After I was able to clear the chamber I re-loaded and fired a couple hundred more round thru it w/o incident. It all could have been worse. The RM could have jammed a live round into the pin, shootong the bullet and the rod straight through the RM's head and out the rear, dropped him for being and idiot.

 

[growr]

No shortage of idiots out there and we seem to get a new crop everyday!

Randy